FROM SONG TO ARTWORK, PRESENTATION IS EVERYTHING- By Mark Rheaume |CBC Library/Music Columnist for CBC's Fresh Air

It probably happens every day, but after nearly 15 years on the job, it still drives me nuts when it does….I’ll be listening to a song and really enjoying it and then – KA-BOOM! - the singer drops the “f”-bomb. Just like that, I put an “X” beside that song and flag it as something NOT to be played on CBC Radio.

How many times has this happened? I doubt I can count that high. But I’d be just as challenged trying to tally the number of occasions in which I’ve taken a pass on a recording for aesthetic reasons, i.e., because the cover makes it look like it’s going to be by a death metal band or hard core gangsta rapper (we don’t play death metal or hard core gangsta rap on CBC). And then there are the albums – inevitably bearing slipshod packaging – with music that only an extremely close relative of the performer could love.

From words and music to album packaging, presentation is everything.Before going too far, I’m going to concede a critical point in the musician’s favour. You are the artist. The creative decisions are yours to make. But deciding what gets played is up to us. And it’s easy to say no thanks to the ones that will give us a problem or be a waste of our listening time -- especially with the vast number of other submissions waiting our consideration. Believe me, the number of recordings landing on my desk is greater than most people can possibly imagine. So with the idea that you may not be unconditionally in love with the lyrics, album art, and other considerations on your last recording – and are willing to make a few changes, if need be - let me offer some thoughts on what does and doesn’t work for us.Let’s begin with songs, since this is first and foremost about music.

If I stress nothing else, I’ll stress this: don’t swear.

Very few stations play songs with “f”-bombs in them. CBC Radio is not one of them. Dropping the “f”-bomb drops a tune from consideration for spins. Graphic sexual references aren’t terribly acceptable either. Yes, Alanis Morissette does both on “You Oughta Know”. And yes, the “f”-bomb was the most effective word to use in that song (can anyone imagine Alanis singing “…and are you thinking of me when you DO her?”). But look at the combined lyrical output of our greatest songwriters and count the “f”-bombs. You’ll find fewer in the entire canon of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, and Gordon Lightfoot than in a single track by Limp Bizkit (remember Limp Bizkit?). There are creative and artistic ways to present graphic ideas. The songs that use them are the ones we play on CBC Radio.

But even clean tracks can be a problem if they run too long. Four minutes and under is best for CBC. We don’t have time to play “Stairway to Heaven”. If the best part of your song comes after the 4:00 point, our listeners will never hear it. Personally, I like longer songs. But it’s not what our listeners want. And if a song goes too long, it gets the “X” in my notebook. I may suggest an edit point for our programs if the song is otherwise very strong, but if there’s a shorter track that’s almost as good, it gets my recommendation instead.

Which isn’t to say that short songs don’t present problems. While it can be a sign of artistic genius, nothing drives us crazier than a song that starts off as one thing and becomes another. A lovely acoustic tune that veers into screeching rock, for example (one of my colleagues calls this technique “losing the plot”). Yes, “Stairway to Heaven” worked. So did “Free Bird”. But we remember those songs only because their rarity made them brilliant. Their less successful imitators remain forever un-spun.

Let me take my own advice and offer a succinct thought: keep the songs short, focused, and clean.

That’s where we stand on the content of the music. Now what about the physical presentation of your music? The covers, liner notes, and so forth. Putting aside for now the idea that music in physical form is dying (that’s an issue – quite unresolved, I think – for another day), how the record looks can also be a make-or-break deal. With the vast number of submissions that come our way, you want to get it right…and you don’t want to stand out for the wrong reasons!

There are, of course, the basics: liner notes that include song timings, MAPL code logo, credits, song numbering (many producers and programmers, being creative types, did poorly in math class and hate counting), and year of release (and please don’t put this info ONLY on the disc itself!).

All of the above is great. But it can all be wiped out by the radio programmer’s Number One enemy: illegibility. Whether it’s black lettering on a dark background, a crazy font, or lyrics and song information stretched across the accompanying booklet to the point where the thing has to be folded out like a road map of Canada (see Beck’s album “Sea Change” for the most annoying liner notes this author has ever encountered), we don’t want to work extra hard to find the information we need. Small legible copy blocks have worked since the days of the first printing press. It makes no sense to defy this rule because the designer you’ve hired (especially if it’s, say, your “cool” artist friend) wants to “challenge” himself. Daring and different is great in a painting on a gallery wall – not in a liner notes. (And can we please never again see spiral lettering? Turning a disc or cover around and around to read the info almost makes me yearn for Beck’s “Sea Change”.)

You absolutely can’t go wrong investing in first class cover art and graphics...as I’ve already noted, with the volume of submissions producers plow through, it’s easy to ignore something that looks tacky, cheap, or inappropriate. If you’ve put the time and effort into making a great recording, don’t chintz on the rest of the presentation - attention to detail always matters!! I wish I could apply the adage “don’t judge by a book by its cover” to this discussion, but I can’t. Much more appropriate is another old saying, “the clothes make the man”.Incidentally, I have the numbers to back all of this up. I hardly ever receive a beautifully packaged record with poor music (honestly, it’s happened fewer than five times in my entire career). I have, of course, received many wonderful recordings with dreadful, amateur-looking covers and have managed to overcome my inherent bias to give these recordings a chance. But by far the most common occurrence is the terrible recording with a terrible cover and liner notes. Sadly, the one is almost always a sign of the other (and vice versa). That’s it for the “rules”. Ideally, art should have no boundaries, much less rigid guidelines. But when it comes to the distribution of music, so many people are involved - from artist to designers to broadcasters to listeners – that presentation is, indeed, everything.

Make yours stand out the right way and we’ll do great things together!

ABOUT MARK RHEAUME

In the CBC Music Library, Mark Rheaume auditions thousands of new recordings for potential airplay every year – everything from independently produced albums by struggling artists to the latest releases from international superstars. He appears as a music columnist on the CBC Radio shows “Fresh Air”, “Ontario Morning”, and Fredericton’s “Information Morning”. In a ten-year run from 2004 to 2014, he profiled new albums in a syndicated feature carried on CBC stations across the country. He has served as a juror for the Juno Awards and the Polaris Prize and for many years appeared regularly on CBC’s “Definitely Not the Opera”, providing a historical context for music in popular culture.

Born in Fort Smith, North West Territories, Mark grew up in Ottawa, where he bought his first piece of recorded music when he was eight years old (a 45 of “Proud Mary” by Solomon Burke). He graduated from the Broadcasting program at Algonquin College and joined the CBC in 1998. His first project at the CBC was archiving the thousands of scripts and albums left to the CBC Music Library by the late radio personality Clyde Gilmour of “Gilmour’s Albums” fame. He lives in Toronto with his wife Kelly and cat Coltrane.